Beverly-Xaviera Watkins

Clinical Associate Professor of Epidemiology

Dr. Watkinsa community-based research scientistand health care provider with a 19-year track record in community-based programs and projects. Dr.Watkins has worked extensively throughout NYC communities of color, serving as a consultant to labor unions and community-based environmental, housing, and social justice organizations in both paid and voluntary positions. Her research focuses on reducing health disparities at the community level. Her areas of specialization are Minority Aging, Environmental HealthDisparities,Community-Academic Collaboration, and Mixed-Methods research.

Dr. Watkins completed her academic training at Columbia University in New York City. Graduating with honors (Summa Cum Laude) from Columbia College where she was a John W. Kluge Scholar and elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She went on to earn a masters degree in Sociomedical Sciences and a doctorate in History from the Graduate School of Arts and Science.

Upon graduation, she joined the faculty at the Mailman School of Public Health as a member of the Community Research Group in the Division of Sociomedical Sciences where she conducted her research under the Community Cores of both the NIA-funded Columbia University Resource Center for Minority Aging Research (RCMAR) Resource Center for Minority Aging Research and the NIEHS-funded Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health (CCCEH).

In 2011 she was recruited from New York University School of Medicine (NYUSOM) to Weill Cornell Medical College (WCMC) to lead the Environmental Health Disparities Research Core of the Center for Excellence in Health Disparities Research and Community Engagement. While at WCMC, she formed, as Director and Principal Investigator, two community-academic research partnerships: the NIEHS-funded Good Old Lower East Side (GoLES) Environmental Justice Collaborative and the Fan Fox and Leslie R Samuels Foundation-funded GoLES Healthy Aging Program.

In 2014 Dr. Watkins rejoined the faculty at NYU in the College of Global Public Health (GPH). In 2016 she became Interim Chair of the Department of Environmental Sciences. Dr. Watkins is Director of the NYU GPH Community Engagement and Research Translation Core (CERT); Co-Director of the NYU NIEHS Environmental Center of Excellence Community Outreach and Engagement Core (CEC) in Environmental Medicine; and Co-Director of the Community Engagement Core of the NYU Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes Program, (ECHO) in Pediatric Medicine.She was an Health and Aging Policy Fellowship (Atlantic Philanthropies) assigned to the NIA, and an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellowship assigned to the US EPA. In January 2016 she became a faculty fellow to the Director of the US EPA’s, National Center for Environmental Assessment, NCEA working on neighborhood specific epigenetic analysis.

Dr. Watkins is currently a Principal Investigator, MPI, of an National Institute of Minority Health Disparities (NIMHD)-funded R01 clinical trial to evaluate an OSA intervention for Blacks; and PI of a Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute, PCORI, Community Engagement Award to develop effective strategies for patient-centered outcomes researchers to work collaboratively with local community-based organizations. She is also Principal Investigator of a second PCORI grant to build the Academic Community Collaborative to Engage StakeholderS ACCESS online platform.

Since 2017 Dr. Watkins has been a member of the University Senate Steering Committee and served as Chair of the University Senate Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee; Chair of the University Senate Academic Affairs Committee; and member of the Senate Grievance Committee. She has been Chair of the GPH Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee since 2016. In 2018 she joined the Center for Social Epidemiology, in the Department of Epidemiology with a secondary appointment in Health Policy and Management.

The changing face of tobacco use among united states youth

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Tobacco use, primarily in the form of cigarettes, is the leading cause of preventable morbidity and mortality in the United States (U.S.). The adverse effects of tobacco use began to be recognized in the 1940’s and new hazards of active smoking and secondhand smoke (SHS) exposure from cigarettes continue to be identified to this day. This has led to a sustained and wide-ranging array of highly effective regulatory, public health, and clinical efforts that have been informed by extensive scientific data, resulting in marked decreases in the use of cigarettes. Unfortunately, the dramatic recent decline in cigarette use in the U.S., has been accompanied by an upsurge in adolescent and young adult use of new, non-cigarette tobacco and nicotine-delivery products, commonly referred to as alternative tobacco products (ATPs). Commonly used ATPs include hookah, cigars, smokeless tobacco, and electronic cigarettes. While there have been a number of review articles that focus on adult ATP use, the purpose of this review is to provide an overview of what is, and is not known about emerging ATP use among U.S. adolescents on a national scale; as well as to identify research gaps in knowledge, and discuss future health and policy needs for this growing public health concern. This paper is not meant to systemically review all published survey data, but to present clear depiction of selected ATP usage in youth populations using national survey data.

Building local bridges: the GoLES environmental justice collaborative

Watkins, B., Reyes, D., & Rennis, L.

Publication year

2013

Journal title

Journal of Environmental Health

Meeting the challenge: developing the tools to build a sustainable environmental health community academic partnership

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Background: Despite expansion of research on elder mistreatment, limited attention has been paid t. The development of improved measurement instruments. This gap is particularly notable regarding measurement of mistreatment in long-term care facilities. This paper demonstrate. The value of qualitative methods used in item development of a Resident-to-Resident Elder Mistreatment (R-REM) measure for use in nursing homes and other care facilities. It describe. The development strategy an. The modification and refinement of items using a variety of qualitative methods. Methods: A combination of qualitative methods was used to develop close-ended items to measure R-REM, including review by a panel of experts, focus groups, and in-depth cognitive interviews. Results: Information gathered fro. The multiple methods aided in flagging problematic items, helped to highligh. The nature o. The problems in measures, and provided suggestions for item modification and improvement. Conclusions: The method employed is potentially useful for future attempts to develop better measures of elder mistreatment. The employment of previously established measurement items drawn from related fields, modified through an intensive qualitative research strategy, is an effective strategy to improve elder mistreatment measurement.

The GOLES environmental leadership workforce development program: a training curriculum for community

Watkins, B., & Reyes, D.

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2012

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Environmental Justice

Environmental public health community leadership development: a collaborative curriculum for community-based organizations.

Watkins, B., & Reyes, D.

Publication year

2011

Journal title

Environmental Justice

Building an environmental justice youth corps: a summer training curriculum for high school students

Watkins, B., Reyes, D., & Green, L.

Publication year

2010

Journal title

Environmental Justice

Completing the circle: a model for effective community review of environmental health research.

Watkins, B. X., Shepard, P. M., & Corbin-Mark, C. D.

Publication year

2009

Journal title

American Journal of Public Health

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While it is well understood that multiple and cumulative environmental stressors negatively impact health at the community level, existing ethical research review procedures are designed to protect individual research participants but not communities. Increasing concerns regarding the ethical conduct of research in general and environmental and genetic research in particular underscore the need to expand the scope of current human participant research regulations and ethical guidelines to include protections for communities. In an effort to address this issue, West Harlem Environmental Action (WE ACT), a nonprofit, community-based environmental justice organization in New York City that has been involved in community-academic partnerships for the past decade, used qualitative interview data to develop a pilot model for community review of environmental health science research.

For the union makes us strong: the impact of positive group experience on the meaning of aging

Watkins, B. In Humanistic Guide to Aging.

Publication year

2009

Gender, Race and Class

Chancer, L., & Watkins, B.

Publication year

2007

Mother-daughter communication about sex among urban African American and Latino families

O’Sullivan, L. F., Meyer-Bahlburg, H. F., & Watkins, B. X.

Publication year

2001

Journal title

Journal of Adolescent Research

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16

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3

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Urban minority girls are at considerable risk for the negative health consequences of early sexual activity. Yet few researchers have explored the sources of information about sexual issues for these adolescents, particularly parent-child communication. As part of a larger qualitative study examining social cognitions about sexuality among urban girls, 72 African American and Latina mothers and 72 daughters representing two age groups (6-9 and 10-13) participated in focus group sessions. Both mothers and daughters addressed the cues associated with the timing of these conversations in the course of the daughters' development; the content of their conversations, including the messages mothers used to influence girls' decision making; and the approaches or strategies both employed. The authors' analyses indicate that beneficial communication may be pre-empted by the antagonistic positions adopted by daughters and mothers as daughters advance sexually. Daughters may in fact benefit more from receiving sex education from other close sources.

The crack epidemic and the failure of epidemic response

Watkins, B., & Fullilove, M.

Publication year

2001

Journal title

Temple Law Review

Social cognitions associated with pubertal development in a sample of urban, low-income, African-American and Latina girls and mothers

O’Sullivan, L. F., Meyer-Balhburg, H. F., & Watkins, B. X.

Publication year

2000

Journal title

Journal of Adolescent Health

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27

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4

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Purpose: To assess girls' acquisition of new sex-related social cognitions at puberty and the social meanings they attribute to changes in their primary social relationships. Methods: As part of a larger study assessing sociosexual cognitions of urban girls, 57 African-American and Latina mothers and 57 girls (aged 10-13 years) participated in one of 16 focus groups. Thematic analyses were conducted on transcripts of the mothers' and daughters' focus group sessions. Results: Analyses revealed four major themes related to pubertal development: (1) physical maturation provides new social status of maturity; (2) puberty is associated with changes in sexual expectations and roles; (3) girls develop social meanings to feelings of sexual arousal; and (4) puberty prompts changes in mother-daughter relationship control. Representative quotations are used to illustrate each of these themes. Conclusions: Our analyses provide insight into the ways in which late childhood and early adolescent urban girls interpret sexuality and sexual relations, perceive changes in their social relationships, and develop expectations regarding their roles in sexual and romantic relationships. (C) Society for Adolescent Medicine, 2000.

Arms against illness: Crack cocaine and drug policy in the United States

Watkins, B. X., Fullilove, R. E., & Fullilove, M. T.

Publication year

1998

Journal title

Health and Human Rights

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2

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4

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The emergence of crack cocaine use in the United States during the mid-1980s was one of the most significant public health problems of that era. Crack use contributed to a series of sexually transmitted disease epidemics, to epidemic increases in violent injuries and homicides, and to significant increases in the incidence and prevalence of cocaine addiction. Despite these threats to health and safety, a national public health campaign to counter crack-related morbidity and mortality was never mounted. To the contrary, the strongest response to the crack epidemic has come from the police and the courts. As a result, crack-related crimes have accounted for dramatic increases in the numbers of adolescents and adults imprisoned in the United States. Scarce attention to the public health dimensions of these policies, let alone the human rights implications, has been catastrophic for affected individuals and communities.

Laying down the law: Reducing illegal tobacco sales to minors in central Harlem

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Objectives. This study compared the impact of educational and enforcement interventions on retailers sale of tobacco to minors in Central Harlem, New York. Methods. In randomized trial with repeated measures. 142 stores were randomly divided to control, education and enforcement groups. Results. Overall tobacco sales to 12- and 13-years-old minors at baseline (98%) were among the highest in the nation. At 6-month and 1-year follow-ups decreases in rates of tobacco sales to minors were modest among education stores and substantial among enforcement stores. Conclusions. Effective reduction of tobacco sales to minors may require ongoing enforcement measures including fines for retailers who violate states and local laws.